NEW YORK -- They couldn't all be gems for Sean Manaea. But this was his first bad start in a long while.

The Mets left-hander got knocked around for eight runs (six earned) on nine hits in just 3 2/3 innings in New York's 11-7 loss to the Royals on Saturday at Citi Field.

"He struggled to find the command for his pitches, and it was a battle for him today," manager Carlos Mendoza said. "He didn't stay on the attack."

It was Manaea's worst start since the one last May that spurred the Giants to move him to the bullpen. In that game against the Nationals, he allowed eight runs, too, in 2 2/3 innings. Manaea didn't make another start until September.

But it was those months in between as a reliever that helped Manaea find himself. Since he returned to a starting role down the stretch last season, he'd been on top of his game. That included the first two starts of his Mets career.

Manaea was on a six-start run -- his final four with San Francisco in 2023, and his first two with the Mets in 2024 -- in which he'd posted a 1.80 ERA with 32 strikeouts in 35 innings.

His two starts as a Met were both gems. Manaea pitched six innings of scoreless, one-hit ball with eight K's against the Tigers in his team debut on April 1, and he collected his first win for New York with a five-inning, one-run, six-strikeout effort against the Reds last weekend.

Manaea hadn't even given up more than three runs, or failed to complete five innings, in any of those six starts going back to that May 10, 2023 game.

Saturday was about as big a clunker as it gets. Eight runs against your starter are tough to come back from, despite another resilient offensive performance by the Mets, led by Pete Alonso's 20th career multi-homer game. But it was also a weird day for Manaea and the Mets.

The four-run fourth inning, when Manaea was knocked out of the game, could have been scoreless if not for a pair of defensive gaffes by the Mets. First, on a windy day at Citi Field, Starling Marte dropped Bobby Witt Jr.'s fly ball in the right-field corner for a three-base error; Witt scored a batter later. Then, Brandon Nimmo went for a jumping catch on Salvador Perez's fly ball to the left-center-field wall … only to have the ball deflect off his glove, up and over the fence for a home run.

"We can't put blame on the wind. That's an easy play to make," Marte said via interpreter Alan Suriel. "There could be a tornado out there right now -- that's just a ball that needs to be caught."

And in the second inning, when Manaea gave up three runs, he was a pitch away from escaping with none. After pitching around Witt to load the bases with two outs, Manaea got ahead of Nick Loftin 0-2 but lost his command and issued an uncharacteristic bases-loaded walk -- his first since the 2017 season. He also got ahead 0-2 on the next batter, Perez, but couldn't put him away and allowed a two-run single.

There were two things missing on Saturday, in Manaea's mind: his usual ability to go after hitters, and his changeup. But both of those issues were tied to his command, not his stuff.

Manaea's changeup has been a key weapon for him as an extra pitch in his arsenal as a starter, beyond the fastball-sweeper combo he relied on when he was in the Giants bullpen. But the Royals knocked four hits against his changeup on Saturday, and it was the changeup Manaea went to on the full count to Loftin that yielded the bases-loaded walk.

"Just the feel and the metric side of it, I thought it was good," Manaea said. "[But] whether it was them seeing it, or just leaving it up, they put some good swings on it."